MESSAGE TO BRAND CMOS

Brands are moving from spots to spatial environments. Can CMOs catch up? Are we witnessing the end of the campaign era? As the industry shifts from advertising to experiences, the change is showing up in clear ways: companies divesting from once coveted spots, redirecting budgets to experiential builds, and leaning harder into cultural collaborations. At the same time, something else is happening. C-suite leaders are beginning to bypass their own CMOs and brand teams.In the past few years, there has been no shortage of articles about the changing CMO role. Some point to shrinking teams or shorter tenures. Others try to explain why CMOs no longer hold the influence they once did. The rise of “fractional” CMO reflects the same shift, but the reasons run deeper than influencers, ad blockers, AI. Something more fundamental is changing in the way brands actually show up in the world.

It seems the way we were all trained, the brands that we built, and the outputs we created don’t fit in the world we live in now. Companies are creating spatial experiences and real-world spectacles that can be pop-up, permanent, virtual, or a blend of all three. In that context, brand guidelines and calendar-driven marketing campaigns are square pegs in a round hole. Brands can no longer just insert messaging into blank canvas media platforms. They have to behave in the world. Brands are showing up through all kinds of experiences now. It might be a space, a cultural moment, a piece of art, or a product drop. The point is the same. These are lived expressions, not ads to be amplified.

As someone who spent her young career as a copywriter and creative director, I was trained to champion the sanctity of The Brand. But since I shifted focus to designing experiences and environments, I have been struck by instances of executives–CEOs, COOs and CXOs specifically—who direct their agency partners not to engage with their brand teams, citing slowdowns and byzantine rules that don’t work in integrated ecosystems of architecture and technology. The reality is, most brands were designed for 2D environments, with some allowance for digital expression. Now that brands need to express themselves spatially–in either real or virtual environments, their style guides are antiquated.

The world waits for no brand The rise of the experience economy proved that a message is not enough. People want to feel a brand in action. Today, companies are rethinking how they live in the world. Budgets are moving from coveted Super Bowl spots to digital activations, cultural collaborations, and real-world expressions at major events. The savviest brands are shifting from temporary campaign moments to permanent or semi-permanent structures that connect with the local story. At recent Olympic events, brands like Coca-Cola have chosen to create parks and community spaces instead of pop-ups. These are not campaigns. They are destinations. And when brands begin creating environments, teams built around quarterly messaging have to rethink how they work The future is omnispatial

Brands now live across physical spaces, digital layers, and virtual platforms. These are no longer separate zones. They work together as the connected layers of a brand ecosystem. A story might begin in a store, continue on a phone, and end in a virtual experience. The CMO of the future will need to understand how these layers comprise one story. They will need teams who can bring a brand to life in material and technological ways, not only through words and visuals, but through the way a place looks, sounds, and feels when someone steps inside it.

Shift the paradigm from conversation to destination

While the CMO role traditionally built a calendar and cadence around seasonal messages and campaigns, it’s time to reframe the whole construct of how and where we tell stories. We don’t tell stories through overt messaging anymore. We tell them in sensory ways people can touch, see and move through. That requires a different kind of design team and a different kind of output. The goals are the same–to showcase the best of the brand’s products and services, but the way to do that, and the people who will achieve it, require a different skill set. Imagine how you’d tell your stories in physical spaces, in the public square, across devices–not in traditional campaigns that people can block, but in immersive moments that people discover and navigate as part of their daily lifestyle journeys rather than the media they consume, which is actually a barrier to lived experience. 

If we rethink the marketing function as a conduit to real-world lived experiences rather than messaging campaigns, everything changes: the quarterly calendar, the creative product, the players, the workflows. It changes who you hire, what they do, and how they do it. But you know what else may change? The CEO’s perspective on the value and vision you bring to the organization. 

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About LMNL Studio

Whether physical or virtual, our future environments and interactions must start

with human-centric design and values-based storytelling. LMNL Studio develops

strategic foundations, narrative frameworks, and design solutions to

bring more humanity to our future places and pursuits. Our mission is to

create purposeful interactions that educate, elevate, and inspire.